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The Templars

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The Templars

By: Dan Jones
Narrated by: Dan Jones
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About this listen

 Bloomsbury presents The Templars written and read by Dan Jones.

Dan Jones narrates in his inimitably vivid and authoritative fashion the remarkable story of the Knights Templar.
'Exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS

'Jones is certainly an entertainer, but also a fine historian who knows how to render serious scholarship into accessible prose' The Times

'Another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' Observer

‘When it comes to rip-roaring medieval narratives, Jones has few peers, and in the Templars he finds the perfect subject' Sunday Times

The Knights Templar were the wealthiest, most powerful – and most secretive – of the military orders that flourished in the crusading era.

Their story – encompassing as it does the greatest international conflict of the Middle Ages, a network of international finance, a swift rise in wealth and influence followed by a bloody and humiliating fall – has left a comet's tail of mystery that continues to fascinate and inspire historians, novelists and conspiracy theorists.©2017 Head of Zeus (P)2022 Penguin Random House Audio Europe Medieval Military Middle Ages Funny Suspenseful Imperialism Middle East Crusade

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All stars
Most relevant
Lots of fact fiction history stories intertwined with adventures and intrigue. I’ve just finished listening and I’m about to start again in case I missed anything. I very rarely Re read (listen) to a book but this is well worth two or maybe three bites to get a grip on the mix of facts, nuance and characters.

Thoroughly absorbing

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The Templars, The Rise and the Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors is a chronological history of the Knights of Templar. It is a wide-ranging thoroughly researched book that relies overwhelmingly on primary sources. It gives equal analysis to the Muslim and Christian perspectives throughout the book. It is also a thoroughly entertaining account.

Right from the opening paragraph you get a taste of what’s to come, ‘It was a foul autumn morning in Jaffa when the pilgrims came out of the church. They were immediately swept up in the stampede of a crowd heading towards the sea, drawn by a dreadful cacophony: the scream of timber being wrenched apart and, scarcely audible below the roar of the wind and explosions of waves, the shrieks of terrified men and women fighting for their lives.’ This initially may seem like factual history padded out with imaginative detail but it is in fact based on an account by an English pilgrim named Saewulf who was en route to Jerusalem in 1102 and escaped drowning by disembarking the doomed vessel at Jaffa a day earlier. The variety of sources Dan Jones has used in The Templars includes the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, who was Saladin’s adviser, secretary and high-flown panegyrist and the illuminated cadastral survey commissioned at the end of the 12th century by Geoffrey Fitz Stephen, master of the Templars in England.

Together with his storytelling and the inclusion of historical facts Dan Jones shows how these warrior knights, who at first went to the Holy Land to defend pilgrims on the roads to Jerusalem, which they did from their base on top of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount from which they took their name, became organizationally wealthy in less than fifty years of existence only to came to an abrupt and bloody end in the opening decades of the 14th century.

The ‘Templars owed allegiance to no one but God, the master and the pope. Neither kings nor patriarchs had any formal command over them, and though their able services were sought and willingly given, in the end the Templars were ultimately free from any effective oversight. They defended the idea of Christendom and the honour of Christ, but how they did so was technically a matter for their own instinct and judgement. For the most part, this made them an extremely agile and useful elite fighting force. At times, however, their independence made them dangerous, and they came to be suspected as much as they were admired by the secular rulers with whom they had to share the field of combat.’

‘They were the fiercest fighters of all the Franks,’ wrote the Mosuli chronicler Ibn al-Athir, who knew the order in its prime. In the end they could simply fight no more.’

Most peoples perception of the Templars is based on misinformation mainly due to the fact that over the past 200 years the Templars have also provided rich material for cranks, conspiracy theorists and fantasists. I for one found that I knew less about them than I thought. Reading the account helps to understand the religious conflict that still exists in the middle east today.

The only criticism I have of this account, is that there are a few inconsistencies regarding dates and names between this Audible version and the Kindle version. But these are few. Apart from this, which I have reported and I am sure will be rectified, it is an entertains and informative read.

Entertaining and informative

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Superbly researched and narrated, the definitive history if you want to seperate the facts from the folklore & fantasy.

Superb

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this is the only book you'll ever need on the templars and there history outstanding

warning extremely addictive

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A fascinating history delivered in an incredibly digestible manner that i appreciated a great deal. Loved the book, thank you dan

5 Stars

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